Free Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life by Michael Lewis Page A

Jewish orphans. About half of my classmates were Jewish, but I didn’t know any orphans. In any case, the current headmaster’s name was Scott McLeod, and, he said, the school he’d taken charge of in 1993 was different from the school I’d graduated from in 1978. “The parents’ willingness to intercede on the kids’ behalf, to take the kids’ side, to protect the kid, in a not-healthy way—there’s much more of that each year,” he said. “It’s true in sports, it’s true in the classroom. And it’s only going to get worse.” Fitz sat at the very top of the list of hardships that parents protected their kids from; indeed, the first angry call McLeod received after he became headmaster came from a father who was upset that Fitz wasn’t giving his son more playing time.

     

     
    Since then the beleaguered headmaster had been like a man in an earthquake straddling a fissure. On one side he had this coach about whom former players cared intensely; on the other side he had these newly organized and outraged parents of current players. When I asked him why he didn’t simply ignore the parents, he said, quickly, that he couldn’t do that: the parents were his customers. (“They pay a hefty tuition,” he said. “That entitles them to a say.”) But when I asked him if he’d ever thought about firing Coach Fitz, he had to think hard about it. “The parents want so much for their kids to have success as they define it,” he said. “They want them to get into the best schools, and go on to the best jobs. And so if they see their kid fail—if he’s only on the JV, or the coach is yelling at him—somehow the school is responsible for that.” And while he didn’t see how he could ever “fire a legend,” he did see how he could change him. Several times in his tenure he had done something his predecessors never had done: summon Fitz to his office and insist that he “modify” his behavior. “And to his credit,” the headmaster said, “he did that.”
    Obviously, whatever Fitz had done to modify his behavior hadn’t satisfied his critics. But then, from where he started, he had a long way to go.
     
    W HEN we first laid eyes on him, we had no idea who he was, except that he played in the Oakland A’s farm system, and was spending his off-season, for reasons we couldn’t fathom, coaching eighth-grade basketball. We were in the seventh grade, and so, theoretically, indifferent to his existence. But the outdoor court on which we seventh graders practiced was just an oak tree apart from the eighth grade’s court. And within days of this new coach’s arrival, we found ourselves riveted by his performance. Our coach was a pleasant, mild-mannered fellow, and our practices were always pleasant, mild-mannered affairs. The eighth grade’s practices were something else: a 6'4", 220-pound minor league catcher with the face of a street fighter hollering at the top of his lungs for three straight hours. Often as not, the eighth graders had done something to offend their new coach’s sensibilities, and he’d have them running wind sprints until they doubled over. When finally they collapsed, unable to run another step, he’d pull from his back pocket the collected works of Bobby Knight and begin reading aloud.
    This was new. We didn’t know what to make of it. Sean put it best. Sean was Sean Tuohy, our best player and, therefore, our authority on pretty much everything. That year he’d lead us to a 32–0 record; a few years later, he’d lead our high school to a pair of Louisiana state championships; and a few years after that he’d take Ole Miss to its first-ever SEC basketball title. He’d set the SEC record for career assists (he still holds it) and get himself drafted by the New Jersey Nets—not bad for a skinny six-foot white kid in a game yet to establish a three-point line. Sean Tuohy had fight enough in him for three. But one afternoon during seventh-grade basketball practice, Sean looked